Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Boron in da house

Boron compounds such as borax (sodium tetraborate, Na2B4O7·10H2O) have been known and used by ancient cultures for thousands of years. Borax's name comes from the Arabic buraq, meaning "white."

Boron was first partially isolated in 1808 by French chemists Joseph L. Gay-Lussac and L. J. Thénard and independently by Sir Humphry Davy in London. Gay-Lussac & Thénard reacted boric acid with magnesium or sodium to yield boron, a gray solid. (1) They believed it shared characteristics with sulfur and phosphorus and named it bore. (2) [Chemicool.com - Boron]

What I want to know is, what does all that mean for Leo F. Boron, Sophie Boron and Walter F. Boron, all of whom are authors represented in our library catalogue over here?

Back in 1960, Leo was an added author on the book Transcendental and algebraic numbers, (so not my area of expertise...). More recently, Sophie's been writing about France's constitution, and during the 2000s Walter's been all about a cellular and molecular approach to Medical physiology (come to think of it, I'm an expert on none of these things!).